Microsoft, Samsung agree to share patent portfolio goody baskets

Microsoft gets access to all of Samsung?s patent hotness, while Samsung gets …

Microsoft has announced another patent-sharing agreement, this one with South Korean electronics giant Samsung. Microsoft gets its hands on all Samsung's cool stuff, and Samsung gets to ignore Steve Ballmer when he goes off on a certain free operating system. "Samsung... may utilize Microsoft's patents in Samsung's products with proprietary software and Samsung will also obtain coverage from Microsoft for its customers' use of certain Linux-based products," the companies said. Neither company would say how much money is changing hands, but both said that payments would be based on the value of past and future inventions. Samsung published more patents in the US last year than any other company and, except for a few distractions, has been on a roll lately. This is the latest in a series of similar agreements Microsoft has reached with companies such as Fuji Xerox, Novell, NEC, Seiko Epson, and Nortel.

"Patent collaboration agreements like this expand access to ideas and lead to even more desirable products for our customers," said Shung Hyun Cho, a Samsung senior vice president.

Certainly if your engineers spend more time engineering and less time looking over their shoulders for patent lawyers, more desirable products will be brought to market. Meanwhile, the more Xboxes and Zunes Microsoft makes, the closer it gets to being Samsung. And the more things Samsung makes that use or interact with Microsoft software, the more a partnership with Redmond makes sense. Left to their own devices, these two giants could at some point become fierce competitors. This agreement should go a long way in forestalling that.